Not My Doctor
by celticfox
Summary: DoctorRose reunion fic with a big twist. Please R&R!
1. Otherworld

**I'm sure someone's thought of this before, but I just had to write it, considering how many people are writing TenRose reunion fics. And because I love the Ninth Doctor. I'm sure there are lots of discontinuities, though, considering that I have not actually seen 'Doomsday' yet.  
**

**Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the property of BBC. **

She's driving home when he call comes. "Rose?"

She sighs, preparing herself for another crisis. "Yes?"

"We found an alien. Unconscious. It's been heavily electrocuted by Cybermen, but that doesn't appear to have damaged it. Doesn't appear to be much of a threat, but you never know. The data banks don't recognize its DNA, so we thought you might know what it is."

"Oh, all right. Describe it to me. Is it humanoid?" She does a U-turn and heads back for the base. She really was hoping for a quiet night with her family. Domestic. The simple word brings memories, and she shakes her head in despair. It's been a year since she last saw him and he still haunts her every thought. She tries to distract herself by focusing on the current problem.

"Yes. Remarkably so. Looks exactly like a human male. We didn't know it was alien until someone tried to check its pulse. Two hearts."

The world seems to slow. Rose narrowly avoids a tree. She gasps, trying to force down the insane hope. _It's not him, it's not him, it's not him... _"Has he got brown hair and eyes? Sort of freckled?"

"No, long black hair, don't know the eye color," her friend says in confusion. "Why? Think you might know him?"

"No," she says, sighing, despair hitting her all over again. She focuses driving. "What's his body temperature?"

"15 degrees celsius, 59 fahrenheit." Rose rubs her forehead. This unknown alien visitor seems to have the exact same phisiology as Time Lords. She scans her memory for more information about that mysterious species.

"Don't give him aspirin."

"We're not stupid, Rose."

"Sorry. I'm tired. I'll be there in a minute." She drives into the parking lot and in a few minutes is on her way to the Torchwood hospital facility. As her shoes click on the smooth white floor, another possibility comes to her. He could have regenerated... She stops. If that happened, would she still love him? Of course she would. She'd loved his past two reincarnations, hadn't she? But it wasn't him. _It's not him, it's not him, it's not him..._

Eventually she comes to the right ward and takes a deep breath. If he's regenerated, will she recognize him? Of course she would. The earth would stop turning and nothing would exist but them, and it wouldn't matter if he was wearing a different face because it would still be the brave, witty, totally insane man she loves so much. But it wouldn't be him. _It's not him, it's not him, it's not him..._

She walks in.

Tosh runs over to her. "He's over here," she says, pulling Rose along. Worry is etched on her lovely face. "He seems to be getting worse and we don't know how to deal with it." She tows Rose over to a hospital bed and pulls aside a curtain.

Rose stares into an extremely familiar face, one she'd thought she'd never see again. The hair is much longer, but he still has big ears.

She faints.

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar_ ...**

Sounds. Smells. Whiteness. Slowly he returns to consciousness. His head hurts, and he moans softly.

Smells. It smells of disinfectant, of that queer mix of scents that make up a hospital. A hospital. He is in a hospital. A vague memory surfaces. He regenerated once in a hospital. Strange that he is the patient so much. He can't quite remember why it is strange. Something to do with his name. A name that has temporarily slipped his mind.

His vision returns more slowly, but eventually he can see that a young woman has collapsed in front of the hospital bed he is lying on. She is wearing some kind of uniform that reminds him a bit of UNIT. The others are wearing the sterilized white peculiar to hospitals everywhere, be they Raxicoricofalipatorian or Human. They are fussing over her. Slowly she awakes. She stands up, a bit wobbly. She stares at him. "Hello," he says. It doesn't come out quite as friendly as he had planned, a strangled cough (there's something wrong with his throat, he realizes) but he knows she hears him.

"Doctor," she whispers. Ah, yes. That's his name, or part of it, at least. Doctor who? he wonders. It'll do, for now. But how does this pretty young human know it? Is that one of the memories that lurk out of sight?

He clears his throat and tries again. "Hello! Have we met?"

He sees the stunned look on her face as darkness claims him once more.

_**timewartimewartimewartimewar**..._

Fainting was stupid and embarrassing, Rose decides. She stares at the man on the bed, the readings on the screens proclaiming him to be unconscious once again. She can't take her eyes off him. _You're dead. You died. It was my fault. _

Doctor. My Doctor.

But he doesn't recognize her. A possible explanation comes to her. What if this is him before he met her?...

No. The paradoxes that would entail make her brain hurt. There must be some other explanation. But what? It doesn't matter. He's here. Her Doctor. She reaches out and holds his hand for the first time in two years. She realizes she is crying. She stares at his familiar face. He looks different, with long hair. More vulnerable.

"You know him?" Tosh asks, a question in her eyes.

"Yeah," she says, swallowing. "It's the Doctor."

"The-" Tosh begins, incredulous. Like all of Rose's coworkers, she knows the story of the man who left her stranded in another universe. It doesn't help that her parallel self in the universe Rose still thinks of as home actually met the Doctor, shortly before he blew up Tenth Downing Street. This Tosh knows nothing of that, but her face tightens in anger.

"Tosh, it's not his fault," Rose insists. "An' anyway, this isn't the Doctor who left me here. He's..." She tries to find the words to explain the Doctor's regeneration, and fails. "How is he?" she asks. "I'm not a... a doctor, I can't read those screens."

Tosh glances over them. "When we found him, he had a bad concussion. We don't know what caused it. Technically he shouldn't have been able to wake up like that, but he's an alien, and we don't know what his physiology is... what do you know?"

Rose takes a deep breath and forces herself to concentrate on the problem at hand. "I don't know much," she says. "He has two hearts, yeah, and it means he doesn't need as much oxygen and his body temperature is much lower than ours. He's very strong and he has a lot of stamina. He hardly ever sleeps. He..." she trails off, then gathers courage, "...he's about nine hundred years old."

Tosh starts. "What?"

Rose nods. "Yup. And that's not that old for his species." She wonders if she should mention regeneration, then decides not to. It's not important at the moment. "He can also survive being electrocuted and he's slightly telepathic."

Her friend sighs. "Sounds perfect. Any downsides?"

Downsides. Yeah, there are downsides. Such as being the last of your race in the universe. _That, _she knows she can't mention. It's the Doctor's secret and it's not hers to tell. She changes the subject. "Where did you find him?"

"We found a group of Cybermen near St. James Park. He helped us using this." She holds up a small object and Rose jumps, recognizing the sonic screwdriver. "It knocked them out somehow until we could destroy them. One of them zapped him." She grimaces. "We were all rather surprised to find he was still alive, and far more surprised to find that he had two hearts."

"Came as a bit of a shock to me, too," Rose murmurs absently, her gaze once again straying to that face. She'd seen her first Doctor asleep before. Some people look more innocent, less careworn when they're asleep, and he hadn't been one of them. He'd acted like he was fighting a private war in his dreams, and from what she had known of him that could well have been true. Now, though... he looked, well, not carefree, but definitely not tormented like before. At peace.

"Sleep well, Doctor," she whispers.

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar_...**

_"Do it, Doctor, do it!" Sarah cries. "Remember what the Time Lords said!"_

_Time stretches into eternity as he contemplates genocide... but he knows what he must do._

_He presses the button that sets off the explosives._

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar_... **_  
_

Rose sits by the Doctor's bed. Someone- maybe Tosh- has brought her a chair, and she sits there, unwilling to leave his side. Afraid he'll evaporate into a mist, or just disappear like the other one did a year- so long!- ago on that Norwegian beach.

So it's her that first hears the beeping as his breathing and heartbeats stop, his temperature drop. She stares at the screens, then rushes to his side. He's not breathing and he has no pulse. _God, no! This was all I needed. _

Tosh comes running. She stares at the screens, then checks his pulse. She tries to start his hearts again with electricity, but fails. She looks at Rose, still gazing at the Doctor's face, trying to memorize it before it changes. "Rose," she says gently. "Rose, I'm so sorry. The hearts must have been damaged by the electric shock. He's gone."

"No he's not," she says almost bitterly.

Tosh frowns. It's not like Rose to deny reality. She's seen plenty of death before. "Rose, you have to accept it, he's dea-"

"Tosh, no!" she cries. She takes a deep breath. "There's something I didn't tell you about Time Lords. They... they don't die, they change." She stares at the Doctor. Any minute now... "It's called regeneration, and it happened to him while I was traveling with him. That face, it isn't the one he was wearing when he left me." She feels like sobbing. Once again she's lost him.

She's sick of seeing the Doctor die.

"Don't do this, you idiot!" she screams at him.

And, like a miracle, he opens his eyes.

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._ **

It's rather rude, he thinks, all things considering, to wake a Time Lord from his healing coma, especially considering that he was only trying to recover from being fatally electrocuted helping them. He opens his eyes, feeling very irate, and once again he sees the blond girl. She looks like she's going to faint again. Now why would that be? He shifts, trying to get comfortable, and feels the needles in his arms. Ah. The problem with the healing coma is that so many species mistake it for death. Oh dear. Now he'll have to explain. Oh, and sort out the mystery of the mysterious girl. "Hello again," he says.

"Doctor?! But you were dead!"

"Hard to kill, me," he says. "But if you don't mind me asking, miss, how d'you know my name?"

"It's me," she breathes. "Rose. Don't you remember me?"

He scans his quite extensive thousand-year memory. "Nope. Not a clue. Is this earth?"

"Sort of," is the rather confusing reply.

She's pushed aside by a professional-looking Asian woman in a doctor's uniform. "Excuse me sir, now that you're awake, would you mind filling out this form for me? Standard Torchwood procedure, I'm afraid."

"Torchwood?" he asks, remembering.

"Yes," says the blond- Rose (nice name)- "but it's okay. They're nice."

He is even more confused. "Of course they're nice. I of all people should know they're nice. After all, they kept helping out UNIT."

She gapes at him. "What?"

He ignores her, turning to the form. He reads it, and stops when he reaches question nine. "Who wrote this?"

"I did," Rose says, smiling tentatively.

He re-reads the question. "Do you intend to take over the earth, enslaving and/or destroying all human life? It would save a lot of time if you said yes." He grins his usual manic grin, and she inhales sharply, but when he turns to look at her she shakes her head and he continues reading. Question thirteen brings him up short. "If you know how to contact an alien known as 'The Doctor', please, tell him Rose Tyler wants him back." What?

He looks at Rose, just as she bursts into tears and flings her arms around his neck.

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._ **

_After he returns home, there is congratulations, a medal. It's all hollow and empty and he wonders if it was worth it. Xenocide is the most terrible thing in the universe._

_Romanadvoratrelundar is the only one who understands._

_He takes Sarah Jane home. She never sees the mummies, anti-matter monsters, or Loch Ness Monster._

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar_... **_  
_

After a moment she backs off, much to the Doctor's apparent relief. Again she's struck by how different he looks. His black hair hangs down below his chin, and he just looks so much... happier. "Don't you remember me at _all, _Doctor?" she asks.

"Nope." He shakes his head. "Tell me, how did we meet?"

She takes his hand. "You had discovered that the Nestene Consciousness was trying to take over the earth by controlling all plastic. You'd tracked down its signal to a relay device on the top of a department store animating a bunch of living dummies in the basement. You were certain there was no one else in the building- it was late- and you had a bomb that could blow up the relay before the dummies had a chance to hurt anyone. Then a stupid little shopgirl happened to wander into the midst of the dummies...

_Even though she knew it was just a student prank, the sight of the dummies sent a shiver down her spine. She backed against the wall. One of the dummies held out its arm. She struggled not to scream..._

_And then he was there, a comforting presence with an air of authority and barely contained excitement. He took her hand and it felt right. "Run!"_

... and of course we saved the world, stopped the Nestene Consciousness, and then you invited me to travel with you in the TARDIS and we jus' kept on saving the world. Exploding sun in the year five billion, ghosts and Charles Dickens, Raxicoricofallopatorians in Ten Downing Street, Daleks on Satellite Five... it just never stopped, and I wouldn't have missed it for anythin'." She doesn't know whether to smile or cry.

The Doctor has a look of complete bewilderment on his face. "Nestene Consciousness? But why would it invade Earth? It's perfectly happy with its food planets. And... Daleks? There are no Daleks. I was sent back in time by the Time Lords to destroy them before they had a chance to hurt anyone. Your story just doesn't make any sense!"

Rose stares at him in horror. She's beggining to realize... "Doctor, the Nestene Consciousness' food planets were destroyed in the war. You know, the Last Great Time War? Between the Time Lords an' the Daleks? Your... your planet was destroyed? You... you always said you were the last Time Lord?"

"What?" Now the look on his face mirrors hers. "Gallifrey? Destroyed? No! No, it's fine! I can feel it there!"

"Oh, dear Lord..." she murmurs. She rubs her eyes.

"Rose?" Tosh asks. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"The Doctor," Rose explains. "It's not him. It's his parallel in this universe."

**Well? Did you like it? Should I continue it? Please review!**


	2. Dreams of Another

**Chapter Two!**

Okay, now he's really confused, but his genius mind sets to work on the problem. "You're from another universe? Another universe with another me? How come?"

"Long story," she says, and he can see she's fighting back tears. He wants to comfort her; she reminds him of other spunky women he's known, Sarah Jane, or Grace. Maybe... maybe even Romana.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere," he jokes, and is rewarded by her smile. "Come on, tell me. I'm sure the story is going to be fascinating. And I want to hear all about this other me."

She starts to tell him about a parallel Torchwood, a way between worlds, Cybermen, a Void, a Cardiff Rift... it's a wild and fanciful tale, full of adventure and heroics, just the way he likes it. "Fantastic!" he says. She stops. "What?" he asks.

"Oh..." she says, "well... you regenerated, see, and you... you didn't say that anymore."

"I regenerated?" he repeats, excited. "Am I ginger?"

"Nope, sorry," she laughs, "you're more sort of Science Geek Professor."

He sighs dramatically. "Well, I guess you can't have everything." She's still eyeing him curiously, and he guesses she's comparing him to that other Doctor. It's rather an uncomfortable feeling. "Would you stop doing that?" he says irritably.

"Sorry," she says contritely.

"How did I... die?" he asks. Wow, this is morbid.

"The Daleks were taking over the earth in the far future and you were the only one who could stop them and you tricked me into going home in the TARDIS so I would be safe but I looked into the Time Vortex and... it's all a bit of a blur after that but I woke up in the TARDIS with the Daleks destroyed and you dying from having absorbed the energy of the Vortex, and you regenerated," she says all in one breath.

"Wow," he says. "I like this other me. How was he different from me?"

She hesitates, and he knows she's going to leave out the bad bits. "He had short hair. Do you wear a leather jacket? 'Cos he did."

"Nope," he says, "but I will if you want," and he grins.

"He grinned like that," she continues, "and he said 'Fantastic', and he was the bravest, most amazing man in the universe."

"And what about the bad bits?" he asks, and she looks guilty. "Come on Rose, my planet was blown up, I think it affects me."

"She can tell you later," the Asian woman interrupts. "You should rest now."

"Well, don't panic if it looks like I cop it," he says. "It's just the healing coma. I can lower my body temperature to below freezing," he boasts.

"I'm _not _going," Rose argues with the nurses. "I'm not leaving him after all this." She still looks like she's going to burst into tears at any minute, and he feels like giving the parallel him a good kicking for leaving her here. That gives him an idea... but then they inject him with something and he loses the idea as everything goes dark.

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._**

Her cell phone rings. It's not the SuperPhone, of course- that was destroyed, and anyway it was pretty useless without a Doctor to call- just an ordinary cell phone, and when she picks up Jackie's on the other line, and Rose has no idea what to tell her. Her mother has never been fond of Rose's nine-hundred-year-old alien friend, and she probably still wants to slap him.

"Rose, darling, how come you're late?"

The lie comes easily to her lips, because saying the truth would make it real, and she still doesn't quite believe he won't just vanish. "Got held up, Mum. Something came up. I probably won't be home till morning."

"Darling, you work too hard, I've always said so! You can't afford to stay up all night, sweetheart, you'll be tired tomorrow."

"I know, Mum. Sorry." She hangs up before Jackie can say anything more, and goes back to staring at him. The blue-green eyes she used to love so much are closed now, and the screens show he's unconscious. She sits next to him, wishing she was brave enough to hold that familiar hand. _I thought I'd lost you forever._

But what does she do now? When he's recovered, will he still want her to travel with him? And could she bear it to be with the man she loves, when he doesn't love her back? Perhaps in time he'll come to reciprocate her feelings.

But can she do that to Jackie, all over again? This Doctor, she knows, is the one Jackie hates. She was beginning to accept the other one, perhaps because he appeared younger, more innocent. This Doctor never looked young or innocent.

Now, though, he just might. He looks as though a great burden has been lifted from his shoulders, like he believes the world is an amazing place. _Oh, Doctor, I never realized before just what the Time War did to you._

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._** _  
_

_"Yes, that's my ship," he admitted, gazing at the blue police box. The Nestene Consciousness roared accusingly. "That's not true! Yes, I was there! I fought in the War, but it wasn't my fault! I couldn't save your world, I couldn't save any of them!"_

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._** _  
_

The Doctor is pretty relieved to wake up. He usually doesn't dream, but that one was frightening and strangely real. _Probably brought on by Rose's wittering about how she met the other me._

Rose. He turns, and she's there, slumped in her chair, fast asleep. She must have been there all night. The other Doctor must have really meant a lot to her, he realizes. And now he's got to live up to his parallel self. What has he gotten himself into?

"Rose," he says softly. She opens her eyes sleepily. "Doctor," she says. "You're not a dream, then?"

"No, I'm real enough," he says and takes her hand.

She drops his hand like it's red-hot. "Wh-what did you do that for?" she asks.

He feels hurt. "I dunno, just seemed like the right thing to do."

"Your other self... he held my hand too," she says. "Not as much after the regeneration, though." She looks tentatively at the Doctor, who is sitting up in bed with a bemused expression on his face. "Are you feeling better?"

He does a self-check. "Yup, all better now!" he says. "And once I get back to the TARDIS, she'll make sure I'm good as new. You know about the TARDIS, right?"

"Sure," she says, rolling her eyes. "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. T.A.R.D.I.S. Tardis." She grins. "First thing you told me. Well, after the whole 'it's bigger on the inside' thing."

"Do you... do you want to come with me?"

"I... I don't know," she says uncertainly. "I've got to call me mum. And anyways, you can't just go swanning off, you need to fill out mountains of paperwork!"

"Ah, paperwork," he replies with a careless wave, "it can go stuff itself. If you've traveled with me I'm sure you know I'm not one for paperwork."

" 'Domestics'," she says, like she's quoting the other him. She grins. "Oki-doki, then, I guess I'll just call my mum." She stops. "Unless... you already have someone else with you?" She looks so scared at this prospect it's all he can do not to laugh.

"Nope."

"Right then." She takes out her phone and dials. After a moment she says, "Mum? It's me. I've found the Doctor. If all goes well he'll bring me back to this very moment and you'll never need to hear this message, but, well, we know the Doctor's not very good at that kind of thing." He snorts in indignation. She continues, "so don't worry about me, all right? Give my love to Pete and Mickey. See ya!" She hangs up. "Well, Time Lord?" she asks. "Wanna go somewhere?"

"Let's leg it out of the hospital first," he says, "or they'll drown me in paperwork." They both laugh, and it feels for one instant like he's known her forever. Then the moment is gone, but she's still smiling, and as he gets out of bed and prepares to run away, his hand finds hers and holds it close.

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._**

_Lonelyness. All alone, forever. So lonely._

"_You think it'll last forever. The people, and cars, and concrete. But it won't. Then one day it's all gone. Even the sky. ...My planet's gone. It's dead. It burned, like the Earth. It's just rocks and dust. Before its time."_

_"What happened?"_

_"There was a war, and we lost."_

_"A war with who?... What about your people?"_

_"I'm a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. They're all gone. I'm the only survivor. I'm left travelling on my own, 'cause there's no one else."_

_"There's me."_

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._** _  
_

Rose wakes up to the sound of birds. _Wha'? Birds in th' TARDIS? _she thinks muzzily. After a few minutes she hauls herself out of bed and realizes the musical sound was coming out of a small speaker next to her bed. "Thanks, old girl," she mumbles.

It isn't her room, of course, not yet, but the TARDIS has willingly obliged her with a brand new pink-and-purple room and a very comfortable bed. An extremely psychic ship could be a good thing, she decides.

She wanders out into the console room in her pyjamas, wondering once again at the strange console room, which appears to have been redecorated. Instead of the green and gold colors it is all blue and mahogany, with a hexagonal console and curving rectangular blue pillars instead of gold coral-like ones. The console room also appears to be much larger than the one she remembers, with strange accessories like oriental rugs on the floor, which appears to be made out of polished wood boards. Racks of ornate candles stand in odd corners. Last night, she remembers, the Doctor explained that he hadn't got around to redecorating yet. She had gathered that he redecorated every couple of regenerations, as his personality changed. _Now there's a strange thought._

She hears footsteps and turns to see the Doctor come into the console room. He has a bemused expression and his hair is mussed, and he looks absolutely adorable. "Good morning, sleepyhead," she says affectionately.

The Doctor still looks confused. "I had a dream last night," he says distractedly.

"Wot's so special 'bout a dream?"

He frowns. "Time Lords don't dream. Not the way you humans do, anyways. We recall memories sometimes as our brains sort things out, but..." his frown deepens, "I didn't recognize this memory. I think... you were there. And I felt really... lonely, for some reason." He shrugs. "Then again, it's not that unusual for me to feel lonely, so I s'pose I shouldn't be too concerned about it." He grins. "So, where'd you want to go?"

She shudders. "Nowhere near Satellite Five, trust me."

"How 'bout Betelgeuse Seven? I know a nice little coffeeshop where we can get breakfast, enjoy the scenery..."

"...and get swept into a violent revolution against the ruling class?" Rose interrupts dryly. "Maybe stop an invasion of Cybermen? I know you, Doctor."

"Well... maybe," he admits.

She smiles. "Fantastic."

**_timewartimewartimewartimewar..._**

"Hurry _up, _Doctor," Rose sings nervously. "The mob is getting closer, and some of them are carrying pitchforks."

Her alien friend fumbles at the TARDIS lock for a moment, then pulls open the door and pulls her inside, slamming the wooden panels behind them.

"Would now be the appropriate time for an 'I told you so?' " the human girl inquires. "I didn't even get to finish my coffee."

"Well, how was I to know they were irrational alien haters?" he replies irritably.

"Hey- _I'm _not an alien!"

"You are to those giant spiders."

She laughs. "God, it's good to be back with you, Doctor," she says. "I missed you so much." She reaches out and touches his hand.

_ "We'll go down fighting, yeah?" She smiled up at him, and he couldn't help but grin back._

_ "Yeah."_

_ "Together?"_

_ "Yeah!"_

_ He grabbed her hand and squeezed it._

_"I'm so glad I met you," he told her._

_"Me too."_

"Doctor? Doctor, what's wrong?"

He blinks. "Sorry, I just... nothing. Sorry." He does what he usually does when knocked off balance, which is to grin charmingly and get busy at something, in this case calibrating the TARDIS console. "Soooo, where'dya wanna go next, babe?"

Her answer stops him in his tracks.

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

**Love it? Hate it? Please review!**


	3. Impossible Planet

**New chapter, same disclaimers.**

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"We'll have to be really careful," he cautions her as he sets the TARDIS coordinates. "Aliens generally aren't allowed there."

"I am _not _an alien!"

"Hey, fine by me," he shrugs. "I rather like being the alien. It gives me an aura of mystery, don't you think?" Something beeped, and he hit the console with a hammer. "Okay, we're on our way!"

She still can't quite believe she's actually going there. Another miracle. "Thank you, Doctor," she says. "You can't imagine how much this means to me."

A rueful smile crosses his face and for a moment he could be her Doctor, old and tired. "Oh, I probably can."

Suddenly there's a jarring screech and the TARDIS rocks like an airplane in turbulence. The Doctor and Rose are thrown against different walls. "What's wrong?" Rose cries over the mounting noise.

"Just the temporal barriers," he shouts back assuringly. "Nothing to worry about."

"Right, well, if I had a penny for each time you've said that..."

Then it stops. They're there. He strides to the the TARDIS doors and opens them. Beautiful golden sunlight streams in, illuminating the Time Lord's face with a fierce joy. "Never really appreciated it that much till now," he said ruefully. "Rassilon, it's so beautiful, Rose. Come and see."

Blinking, filled with excitement, Rose Tyler walked out into the Gallifreyan afternoon.

_**timewartimewartimewar**_

"Oh my god."

"Gorgeous, isn't it?"

She looks about her, stunned, taking in the waving silver-leafed trees and towering red mountains capped with shimmering blankets of snow. A pale copper moon glimmers in the burnt orange sky. "God," she whispers, "this has to be the most beautiful place in the universe."

He feels a deep pang of sympathy for his other self, losing this amazing world. "Turn around," he tells her.

She turns, and gasps. Before her is the might of the Capitol, the majestic domes and towers of golden light. In the center is the Citadel of the Time Lords, containing the Panopticon, Home of the Eye of Harmony. He tells her this softly in a hushed voice bordering on reverence. "Welcome to Gallifrey," he informs her, "the Shining World of the Seven Systems."

"Very impressive." She walks over to the nearest grove of silver trees and plucks a leaf, a delicate lacy thing with veins of gold tracery. "If only I could give him this," she says, tears coming to her eyes. "He missed this place so much."

"I can imagine," he says. "Funny, really, seeing as I've spent more time on your backwater planet than this place."

She looks at him curiously. "How come? How could you ever leave here?"

"Well, let's see," he says bitterly, ticking off reasons on his fingers, "one, my people are pompous bureaucrats. Two, my people let aliens die while they stay aloof and recite their mantra of 'non-interference'. Three, I was exiled for being a total pain. Four, being an alien is much more impressive on your planet than on mine. Five," he smiles at her, " I absolutely love you guys. 'Specially the sixties. Rassilon, you apes make good music. Six, Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar. Don't ask."

She grins. "You goof."

He grins back. "Yup, that's me. One thousand, one hundred and thirty-six-year-old goof."

Rose blinks. "You told me... before... that you were only nine hundred."

"Oh. Well, I lie about my age a lot. Or this could be an older me. Whatever."

She shakes her head, amused. "Why on earth would you think an extra two hundred and thirty-six years would matter?"

"Dunno. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."

_**timewartimewartimewar**_

Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar smiles when she hears the news.

"So, the infamous Doctor has dared to return at last? Arrest him and bring him before me."

"Yes Lord President."

_**timewartimewartimewar**_

_"One more thing—-your name."_

_"What about my name?"_

_"It's too long. By the time I've called out, 'Look out'—what's your name?"_

_"Romanadvoratrelundar."_

_"By the time I've called that out, you could be dead! I'll call you Romana."_

_"I don't like Romana."_

_"It's either Romana or Fred."_

_"All right, call me Fred!"_

_"Good. Come on, Romana!"_

_**timewartimewartimewar**__  
_

"So inside the Panopticon is the Eye of Harmony, which is basically this enormous black hole which Rassilon (founder of Time Lord Society; remind me to tell you about him later) put there to give us enough power to travel in time. Also supplies all energy Gallifrey needs. My people practically invented black holes. Well... as a matter of fact they did," the Doctor ends sheepishly. "There aren't many of us Time Lords, only a couple hundred thousand in fact, the Capitol is pretty much the only city on the planet and all of us live there."

" 'Cept for you," Rose reminds him.

"Yeah, well, I've been informed I'm no longer officially a member of Time Lord society, being classed 'renegade', 'heathen', and, by the charming Councilor Borusa, 'disgustingly sentimental, idealistic and sanctimonious, in short, utterly unbearable'." He grins.

She laughs. "Seems to sum you up perfectly."

"Oy!" he cries, mock-offended, and elbows her.

"Well go on with the history lesson, I know you're dying to," she teases.

"Okay then! Now that-" he points- "is the Time Lord Academy. Where Gallifreyan children are taken to study to become Time Lords, with TARDISes."

"Did you get good grades?"

"Well..." he shifts uncomfortably. "If you must know, I got fifty-one percent on my final. On my second try."

"Ha!" she crows. "Knew it! Not quite the smarty-pants you act like, eh?" Something occurs to her. "So then why'd they give you a TARDIS?"

"Didn't," he tells her, grinning madly. "Stole it."

"Oh, you," she says affectionately. "The poor girl."

"Not really," he says darkly.

"What?"

"The 'poor girl' is over nine hundred years old. Type 40 TARDISes are decommissioned at half that age. She'd have been scrapped if it wasn't for me."

"Oh... but I thought you said she was alive!"

"Yeah," he says tightly, his good mood vanished. "Another reason to leave this idiotic planet."

_**timewartimewartimewar**_

"_Well, if one has godlike powers, one ought to be able to use them, oughtn't one?"_

_**timewartimewartimewar**__  
_

Suddenly the Doctor starts. "OK, tourism over, back into the TARDIS!"

"What? Why?"

"Because I see some of my fellow citizens and they don't look too happy."

"Well what's the worst they can do to us? We haven't done any harm."

"Oh they'll probably just wipe your memory and dump you back on Earth. Me, though... unauthorized use of a TARDIS is a capitol offense. In the past they've been content with just forcing me to regenerate and exiling me to Earth. I might not be so lucky this time, though..."

"What!" Rose practically shrieked. She thought about this as they ran back to the police public call box. "But they let you fight in the war, y'know, the one that never happened!"

"Yes, well, my standing waxes and wanes!" he shouted back, grabbing her hand as they ran through the shining forest. "Once I was even elected President, you know! 'Course I squeezed out of that one, but they got kind of annoyed at me after that... that was in my fifth regeneration, you know."

"You mean you regenerate a lot? Is it like, some kind of hobby?"

"Nope, but I'm sure you know my life style's kind of high-risk," he replies as they jump over a fallen gray-brown trunk and land softly among the drifting leaves that make up the forest floor. "To date, I've died of old age, been forced to regenerate by my fellow Time Lords, died of radiation poisoning, fallen from a radio control tower, died of spectrox toxemia, been fatally injured by another renegade Time Lord, been killed by exploratory heart surgery in 1999 San Francisco (they didn't realize I had a binary vascular system) and the last time, I got shot by anti-alien protesters in fortieth century New York."

"This is, what, your _ninth life?!!" _she says, incredulous. "My god, you really _do _like risking your life, don't you?"

"Is that a rhetorical question, or what?"

They make it to the TARDIS and run inside, the Doctor fumbling at the lock. Lights are flashing and instruments are beeping all over the time ship, and Rose supposes the ship is just as anxious to be gone as its driver. The Doctor strokes one of the blue pillars, murmuring, "Steady, old girl." He pulls levers and twists dials all over, and finally the blue column starts to flash. The familiar dematerializing noise is heard, and the two intrepid time travelers relax.

Not for long, though. The grinding sound is cut off in a long screech of strained metal and the pillar stops flashing. The Doctor grabs his hammer (some things never change) and bangs the console furiously in his frustration. "No no no nonono noooooooo!" he wails. "Please Rassilon no!"

"What's wrong?" Rose asks nervously.

"The blasted Time Lords have done the equivalent of putting a parking clamp on the TARDIS," he moaned.

"Oh..."

There was a sudden pounding on the blue wooden doors. "Renegade!" came the angry sound of many voices, and Rose realized with a start that she was actually hearing Gallifreyan, a language she'd long thought to be dead. "Let us in under Statute 77! We arrest you and your companion in the name of Lord High President Romanadvoratrelundar!"

"Don't worry," the Doctor told Rose, relaxing in his chair and putting his feet up on the console. "They can't get in. The Hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get in, and-"

"-believe me they tried," Rose chorused along. "Yeah, I know. So now what?"

"Wait for them to take off the clamp, of course," the Doctor explained, as if it were obvious.

"Of course," she mutters.


End file.
